


Just Assume It Went Badly

by heixicanadragon



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Explicit Language, Gen, Male Character of Color, POV Character of Color, brothers roughhousing like the huge nerd-jocks they are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heixicanadragon/pseuds/heixicanadragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In response to the prompt "Fight Me: one character fighting with/or against another" for the Wei Triplets.</p><p>Conflict arises for Crimson Typhoon's pilots during their second drift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Assume It Went Badly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PunkHazard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/gifts).



> Indebted to PunkHazard and Cerulean-Spork's previous works, including use of CS's OC Jamie Tan.
> 
> Chinese is either in characters or designated by brackets.

It wasn’t the usual “you went too hard in the Kwoon and almost knocked a tooth out of one of our heads / dental work is expensive, you blockhead,” or the occasional “stop hogging the octopus strips / you don’t even like them / it’s just on principle because both of you keep on conveniently forgetting to restock shrimp chips to fuck with me.”

Unruly thoughts randomly surfaced like stray flotsam and that was the beginning of an end.

The Hong Kong Shatterdome was in a larger uproar than usual upon hearing over the loudspeakers the announcement of the second successful drift achieved by the Wei triplets in their newly commissioned jaeger. The three swaggered out of the drive suit room, their boots slapping the metal flooring and sending the shockwaves through the shuddering sheets of aluminum alloy in their usual unison. They shouldered past the growing crowd of their techs and crew, whose enthusiastic clapping and cheers muted in a ripple effect around them as they saw the looks on the triplets’ faces and measured the distance between the three of them.

Grim faces, wide stances, not even touching each other.

All three of them were shaking with the effort to walk, their jaws set like stone, and several people afterwards swore that they had heard teeth grinding. The crew quickly gave way and let them leave.

~~

The drift had been unexpectedly hard. He should have seen that coming, though.

Cheung glanced to the brothers left and right of him as they, upon entering the dorm halls, had begun practically running in sloppy lockstep back to their shared dormitory. Both Hu and Jin looked sick to their stomachs, and angry. Cheung through the haze of a racing pulse imagined that he didn’t look much different, considering the extra lump of guilt that was burning in his chest.

To the untrained eyes of several acquaintances and nameless strangers out in the public halls, they merely looked uncomfortable, more tired than usual, foreheads shimmering with sweat, breathing hard. Which was the intended effect… until the brothers flung themselves into their bunk room after Hu had fumbled with the lock for a second.

The door slammed. Chueng looked up from his half-kneel as he tore at his laces to see Jin was plastered against it, toeing off his half-undone boots, with a snarl of pain on his face. Chueng could read that look well enough. _ <What the hell, bro.>_

Breath caught in his lungs for a full second before he ducked his head back down and started on the other shoe. The words clogging in his breast and tangling in his head had the effect of freezing his tongue. But it’s not like these thoughts been in any presentable shape before.

The sound of water at full blast echoed into the room as steam clouded in a drift, fighting the chilly air. Hu was already in the shower, a litter of clothes trailing into the bathroom. So Hu had decided to duck out. Leaving his big bro and little bro to… talk.

“大哥…”

Chueng’s stomach twisted tight as it could go, and he could feel the adrenaline dripping into his limbs again despite the two hour testing cycle they had endured. He stood up, squeezing his eyes shut, his head light and his feet feeling five sizes bigger, as he stepped to the wall for a towel from his shelf to wipe his face.

The towel fell to the ground as Jin batted his hand in mid-air.

_—splashes of light flicker behind bright red eyelids —not his eyelids, somehow— the heady fragrance of wysteria-lilac-plum-blossom overwhelms him as he ducks his head into his mother’s sun roughened neck — he stands in harness and stares at Chueng in shock and anger and hurt, so much hurt, at the secret the bastard had been keeping from them—_

Chueng jerked back his hand, sparing a quick glare at his cheating little shit of a brother before he swung his other hand down and grabbed the towel while getting the fuck out of the corner that Jin had backed him into.  _< Fuck ghost drifting, dammit.>_ He had almost made it to the bedside, scraping the stiff (several-times-used and pungent) towel over his face when—

_—a soft, silky mass of doufu slips down a throat— “the diagnosis is—”_

"<Shit, Jin, fuck off, I can’t touch you right now!>" His head pounded with the realization that he had basically yelped in pain as he shook off Jin’s grip from his bare shoulder, spinning around, trying to keep his fists down with only some success.  The tendrils of consciousness — Jin’s consciousness, but with the flavors of Hu and Chueng’s brains overlaid — faded and Chueng suddenly felt even more nauseous as he finally met Jin’s eyes.

They were red-rimmed. A jolt of guilt kicked Cheung in the gut. The sight of 弟弟 at the point of crying — obviously he’d fucked up.  _< You fucking failure,_ _man, if mom ever knew you’d be shitkicked for sure… >_ He growled and turned away again, gripping the towel in his hands and wringing it for all it was worth, painfully aware of how obvious he was. Not like Jin wouldn’t know exactly how he felt right now, ghost drift or no ghost drift. Even if he was a manipulative pain in the ass.

Nothing else but to blab now, chuck it all up like bad meal and give up trying to salvage something from it. “<So. Now you know. I’m a horrible eldest brother, a disloyal ranger, and it’s not like all we’ve sacrificed so far has been worth it either, ‘cause I can’t even—>”

“大哥! <You don’t even fucking get it, do you?>” Jin was suddenly right in Chueng’s face, only several centimeters away but mercifully not touching him anywhere.  “<What we’re mad about obviously isn’t whatever shit you think you’ve fucked up! How long have you been thinking this? What made you think it was ok to keep this from us!>”

Curse his pride, Chueng could feel his hackles rising. He didn’t even realize he was staring him down before Jin looked away. His little brother staggered back, bowing his torso like his stomach was hurting, and Chueng had the fleeting thought that maybe he’d get a break, could retreat and figure out how to explain this mess. Which made the fake-out even worse, when Jin came barreling at him from behind, hitting him in the torso and knocking him to the ground, but even in his shock and the pain of hitting the floor underneath Jin’s weight he could tell that Jin was carefully avoiding any stretches of bare skin and staying away from Chueng’s arms.

But  _ow_. “ <FUCKING HELL, JIN, GERROFF!!!>”

"<NOT UNTIL YOU START EXPLAINING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!>" Jin squeezed his ribs like a vise and started kicking the back of Chueng’s thighs, which were still clothed in jumpsuit and sore as fuck from the Conn-pod, at which Chueng began to recant all reluctance to touch skin to skin with his brother.  _< I’M GONNA POUND THE HELL OUT OF HIM.>_

He roared and struggled, trying to get his hands and knees underneath him so he could shake Jin off and punch him in the goddamn face—

“哎哟，冷静点儿吧!” Hu’s voice hung in the cloud of steam that remained from the shower that must have turned off some time ago. Chueng heard the echo of slapping wet feet coming towards him and tried to roll away but fucking Jin was still on him and bracing his legs stiffly against the ground, if the resistance to lateral roll that he encountered was any indication. He scrabbled at the ground, scraping himself forward, but wasn’t able to shake the youngest brother before the middle one jumped on top of his back —he and Jin groaned in unison as his spine cracked and Hu’s foot connected with Jin’s head as Hu grabbed Chueng’s neck and pinned his head to the ground.

But the pain was gone because time had stopped and their three consciousnesses had merged in his body, in Hu’s, in Jin’s, and he couldn’t tell where he stopped or his brothers began and the ghost drift was throwing them right back into the memory that was at the forefront of their collective mind—

_—the deep rumble of that unmistakable voice—the pills click-clacking in their metal box—“radiation”—Chueng googling plane tickets and housing rates and finally dropping his head on the desk—the overwhelming echo of “what if we just… left—”_

A quiet settled over them. 

_< I wasn’t seriously going to leave. Or make you guys come with me… Not after I had thought it through.>_

_< Shit, bro, we know that.>_ Hu’s mind was as smug as it was gentle.

 _< Well, _now _we do. Now that it’s plain as day that you’re just an overprotective ass, as usual. >_ Jin snorted.  _< I fucking thought that you and the Marshall had had a falling out, the way you shoved that memory away… Like he would kick us out though. _Us _. >_ Chueng detected the embarrassment swimming after that boast and grimaced. Jin really did still worry that they might only be half-way through the door.

 _< Yeah, and what was with the idea to go to RUSSIA, of all places? You want your cute baby bros to freeze into skinny popsicles?>_ Hu was only half-joking.

Chueng lifted his head off the floor, shaking himself loose from Jin’s now limp grasp, and began the intricate process of wriggling out from underneath both his brothers. Hu had fallen to the ground onto his side, his feet and hands the only remaining contact points between his two brothers and himself. Chueng heaved himself up and collapsed into the bottom bunk (Hu’s) and groaned as his brothers more slowly crawled after him and cuddled around him. The telepathic portion of the ghost-drift was fast fading away but through his collarbone he could still feel Jin’s shoulder blade transmitting impatience and rapidly dwindling fear and frustration. Just as clearly broadcast was Hu’s mixture of mystified relief and annoyance coming through his hand playing with Chueng’s ear and the arch of his foot resting on an ankle just underneath his jumpsuit’s hem.

"<Who the hell gave me such fucking losers for brothers,>" Chueng grumbled. "<I have one freak-out about what we’re committing ourselves to and at the bare hint of it y’all almost knock Typhoon out of alignment and then jump all over me like I’m about to fucking  _leave the planet_. >”

Jin lifted his head a bit behind his shoulder to mutter back, “<You’re the one who somehow didn’t realize that the Marshall’s condition wasn’t an isolated event. Shit, it was  _you_  who took on the radiation shielding design the hardest with Tendo.>” He put his head back down. “<I don’t get you, bro. We’re not even technically nuclear like the Mark III’s.>”

Hu stopped his incessant plucking of Chueng’s ear for a moment. “<Big bro just got momentarily freaked by our mortality, Jin. And then trapped himself down his self-loathing spiral. For a whole week. Without telling us. No biggie.>”

Chueng elbowed back hard, pleased to hear Hu’s grunt behind him. “<It’s nothing that little bros would understand. I’m going to hit the showers now. Jin, don’t you forget and fall asleep. You reek.>”

He slung himself out by the mattress support rungs of the top bunk, accepting a punch on the hip from Jin and dodging a pillow from Hu as he slid out. He turned as he opened the shower door, stood still long enough to get both brothers’ attention, and grinned, “<But I did learn one thing today: Jin has sex dreams about  _doufu_ ,>” before ducking in and slamming it shut just in time to avoid being tackled again.

~~

It was evening, and Marshall Stacker Pentecost was stuck at his desk tucked away in the back of the Academy zone of Anchorage Shatterdome, Alaska, skimming over the reports, read-outs, charts, and graphs summarizing Crimson Typhoon’s second test run and the Wei triplets’ second drift. He flicked through the files and sending quick email blasts of confirmation while keeping half an eye on the routine audio/video recording of the drift that Hong Kong LOCCENT had made.

A second test run had been deemed necessary considering the particular complexity of the only triple-pilot jaeger in the Corps, and the records showed that the drift went fine — they had hit a rough patch towards the planned end of the drift while running a standard plasmacaster trial, but the siblings had held onto each other mentally and soldiered through. Stacker jumped to the end of the video to watch the trio as they stepped out of their Conn-pod towards the armory. Their body language suggested fatigue and a deep unease with each other, but from all accounts they’d finished admirably despite whatever hiccup they’d encountered.

He quickly closed out of all files, and looking at the time and calculating that it’d be about lunch time there, sent a brief inquiry to Jamie Tan and a couple others down at HK who could confirm without making it obvious.

Within the hour, Tan replied:  “Re: the Wei siblings’ current relational status: I must admit that we were concerned after this drift, too, but today the Weis were seen by the entire cafeteria in the act of force-feeding the youngest brother tofu for about 10 minutes to the amusement of their entire crew. I think they’re doing fine.” 


End file.
